Press Kit
Logos, screenshots, fact sheet, and three description lengths for press, jurors, and educational partners.
Quick description
50 words — one-sentence pitch
Watts and Wealth is a free, 4-player hot-seat board game that turns the energy transition into a series of card-driven trade-offs — build coal or solar, pass policy or block it, watch the planet warm or not — designed for classrooms, debate clubs, and any table of four.
150 words — medium paragraph
Watts and Wealth is a browser-based hot-seat board game on energy transition, climate policy, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Four players share one device, building a power grid across four eras — Industrial Dawn, Oil Rush, Nuclear and Early Renewables, and Sustainable Future — using 79 cards split across Events, Policies, and Mitigates. Build coal for cheap energy now, pay for it in pollution later. Pass a renewable subsidy and watch your opponents decommission their oil rigs. The game ends in one of four ways: someone goes bankrupt, global pollution hits the tipping point, the table cooperates into a renewable majority, or the richest empire wins at round 30. Designed for secondary and tertiary classrooms, debate clubs, and sustainability practitioners across the Asia-Pacific region. Free, installable as a PWA, runs offline, and collects no personal data.
500 words — full description
Watts and Wealth — Goal Diggers is a free, browser-based hot-seat board game on energy transition, climate policy, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Four players share one device. Each player builds an energy grid across thirty rounds, choosing between twelve facility types — from coal and oil to solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, tidal, geothermal, floating-solar, biomass, waste-to-energy, and offshore drilling. Cost, energy output, and pollution differ per facility. Build cheap and dirty now and you will pay later. Build clean and expensive and you may run out of money before round 18.
The game runs on a 79-card deck: 38 Event cards (crises that befall the drawer — droughts, oil crises, coal-mine collapses, smog events), 33 Policy cards (active powers the drawer holds — subsidies, tariffs, R&D grants, accords), and 8 Mitigate cards (reactive defenses played in response to incoming crises). The deck composition is locked to actual cards, not abstract bins: every card cited on this site verifies against the source data file.
Four eras pace the 30-round unlock schedule. Industrial Dawn (rounds 1–6) restricts you to coal, hydro, and biomass. Oil Rush (7–13) opens oil, geothermal, waste-to-energy, and offshore drilling. Nuclear and Early Renewables (14–19) adds nuclear, wind, solar, and floating solar at scale. Sustainable Future (20–30) unlocks tidal and rebalances costs.
Four endings close every game. Bankruptcy: a player runs out of money. Tipping Point: global pollution crosses 600 and everyone loses together. Renewable Pathway: the table reaches at least 60% renewables and under 300 pollution by round 18 and everyone wins together. Round Limit: at round 30, the richest empire takes the table.
The game was designed for the Asia-Pacific region — the area carrying the steepest climate exposure and the heaviest legacy-fossil dependence — and for classrooms, model UN clubs, debate societies, and sustainability practitioners. It plays in approximately sixty minutes and pauses cleanly between turns. The pedagogical scaffolding draws on Kolb’s experiential learning cycle, the serious-games literature, and a regionally specific framing that takes subsidy politics, smog crises, and a heavily-coal grid as the starting baseline, not a deviation from one.
The web edition installs as a PWA, runs offline after first load, collects no personal data, and is free. The full game is available at play.wattsandwealth.online.
Logos
Screenshots
Twelve screenshots covering the full game arc — main menu through endings. Each tile shows a WebP for fast loading; click Download PNG to grab the full-resolution original for print or press use.
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Main menu — pixel-art title screen against the game’s mixed-energy landscape: wind turbines, mountains, rice terraces, and floating-solar in the foreground. Start Game / How to Play; Continue and Settings shown as Soon. -
Tutorial intro — in-game guide ‘Mae Thareeya’ introduces the four archetypes (Engineer, Scientist, Activist, Politician) before character select. -
Choose Your Archetype — the hot-seat character-select grid. Each of the four players picks one of Engineer, Scientist, Activist, or Politician; each archetype has a different starting perk. -
Plains tile, Industrial Dawn era — the side-scroller board view. The token-toolbar (tokens, energy, pollution, facilities, renewables%) sits up top; the Leave Tile button advances the turn. -
Build menu on an empty tile — the player chooses a facility legal in the current era. Effective cost (after card discounts and active auras) shows before committing. -
Event card draw — Cyberattack. Effect: Steal 10 energy cubes from a chosen opponent. Each card carries a printed effect and a real-world educational fact from the source data. -
Policy card play — Net Zero Movement. All fossil-fuel facility tolls halve while solar tolls double. Policies are held in hand and played during the turn. -
Mitigate card offer — Climate Adaptation Strategy. Players may buy a Mitigate for 2 Energy to keep in hand; Mitigates trigger reactively in response to crisis events. -
Target picker — Coal Lobby Influence asks the drawer to choose which opponent’s Coal facility to destroy. Per-seat panels surface tokens, energy, pollution, and facility counts at the decision point. -
Energy Dilemma scenario — an energy-shortage event forces a 3-way choice: Ration Power, Emergency Diesel, or Demand-Response Deal. Each option trades pollution, energy, and reputation differently. -
Scout tile prompt — the player may pay tokens to scout the current tile for hidden resources and opportunities, or cancel and advance. -
Game Over screen — The Planetary Times: Final Edition. Round-30 ending: most-valuable empire takes the table. SDG Impact Report and a per-player scoreboard close the session.
Fact sheet
- Title
- Watts and Wealth — Goal Diggers
- Format
- Browser-based hot-seat board game (PWA)
- Players
- 4 · pass-and-play on one device
- Session length
- approximately 60 minutes for 30 rounds
- Card deck
- 79 cards · 38 Event · 33 Policy · 8 Mitigate
- Facility types
- 12 (coal, oil, solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, tidal, floating-solar, biomass, waste-to-energy, offshore drilling)
- Archetypes
- 4 (Engineer · Scientist · Activist · Politician)
- Eras
- 4 (Industrial Dawn · Oil Rush · Nuclear & Early Renewables · Sustainable Future)
- Round limit
- 30
- Endings
- 4 (Bankruptcy · Tipping Point · Renewable Pathway · Round Limit)
- Languages
- English at launch · Thai planned
- Price
- Free
- Install
- Browser, optional PWA install · offline after first load
- Data collection
- None · no PII · analytics opt-in only
- Educational fit
- Secondary · tertiary · classroom facilitator notes available
Download all
Individual assets are available above. To request a bundled press pack (logos + screenshots + description text), contact us directly and we will send it over.